"This is an important album — and the Ramones are certainly important, as a building block of music — so you just need to know about them, you don't need to love them," Alisyn continued. "This was a seminal bit of music that so many other bands drew from. And the fact that the Ramones have had staying power for over 40 years tells you something."

Music from restless, vulnerable or disaffected young people gripped Alisyn as an adolescent, in some part, because she herself came from an unstable home, where she was raised by a loving but preoccupied parent.

She chronicles her experiences in her candid, funny and often shocking memoir, Combat Love, the title of which is borrowed from a song by one of her first musical loves, the little known New Jersey punk band Shrapnel.

"As anyone who has ever made it to the other side of survival mode knows, it's nice to pretend that all's well and always has been," Alisyn writes in the 'Author's Note' of Combat Love. "Writing this book gave me a chance to return to the imperfect past, to find the scattered pieces and try to make sense of them, putting them together to make a whole."

The wide-ranging At First Listen conversation starts with the Ramones and revolves around Alisyn's memoir, Shrapnel, punk rock and how it shaped the journalist and person she is.

Listen to the full conversation with iHeartRadio via the player above or find At First Listen wherever you get podcasts.

Go here for more information on Combat Love.

Mary Chapin Carpenter & John Craigie